Live Long And Prosper
by nostalgia
Summary: "No on ever mentions that he's dead."


Title: Live Long And Prosper  
  
Author: nostalgia  
  
Rated: PG  
  
Disclaimer: Paramount own these people.  
  
Summary: Harry Kim is dead, long live Harry Kim.  
  
Notes: Something that always bugged me post-Deadlock.  
  
Oddly, no one ever mentions that he's dead.   
  
True, it was a long time ago, and true, people don't like to talk   
  
about things like that… but sometimes he wonders if they've all   
  
forgotten. He, on the other hand, is still very much aware of it.   
  
Three years ago, more or less to the day, Harry Kim died.   
  
Except that this Harry Kim, the one who lies in bed staring at the   
  
ceiling and wondering if he'll ever feel like he belongs in this   
  
reality, is not, and has never been, clinically dead. He's been   
  
close a couple of times, and his heart has stopped on at least one   
  
occasion, but he's never actually died.   
  
The Harry Kim who left Earth on this Voyager, who replicated the   
  
clarinet lying on the coffee table, who brought the family   
  
photographs that lie in the drawer next to the bed, died three years   
  
ago. Three years, more or less to the day.   
  
But no one ever mentions that. No one seems to remember that Harry   
  
Kim and Naomi Wildman should by all rights be dead.   
  
Everyone tells him that the Harry Kim who died was the same person,   
  
that all the details are correct. But sometimes he wonders, when he   
  
can't quite remember an event, and worries that it never really   
  
happened to him, that it's a false memory put there by everyone   
  
assuming that he's their Harry Kim.   
  
He makes a conscious effort not to spend much time with the   
  
Wildmans, as if there's an in-built limit on this new existence, and   
  
if the Universe remembers what they've done everything will snap   
  
back to the way it was, the way it should be. So far as he knows,   
  
Naomi has no idea that she isn't the little girl who was born on   
  
this ship. When he visits sickbay, he can't help wondering where she   
  
was in the room when she died that first time, that very real death   
  
that the two of them have cheated.   
  
He thought – or maybe hoped – that B'Elanna was going to mention it   
  
once, when they were on shore leave and horribly drunk. Just for a   
  
second, she stared at him, opened her mouth to say something. But   
  
then she changed her mind, and he didn't have the guts to ask her   
  
what she had been about to say. Maybe it was something else, maybe   
  
she's forgotten that she saw him die once.   
  
But they've cheated the odds so many times on this journey, why   
  
should death be any different? Sometimes he wonders if infinity has   
  
turned a blind eye to the lost ship, if the afterlife doesn't want   
  
them anymore. They should all have died in Borg space, and everyone   
  
on board knows that. When they say so out loud, they raise a glass   
  
to Captain Janeway, who cheats the law of averages with a delicate   
  
finesse, but maybe inside some of them wonder, the way he does.   
  
Ensign D'Kella once suggested that Janeway had sold her soul to   
  
Mt'Craza to keep most of them alive and get them home. B'Elanna had   
  
laughed at the idea, and said that if Janeway sold her soul to any   
  
demon, it had better make sure it kept a receipt. And anyway, that   
  
was all just superstition. Harry had laughed as well, but replaced   
  
the alien devil with one from his own mythology. Stranger things had   
  
happened.   
  
And maybe… Maybe…   
  
He certainly wouldn't put it past her, and he wonders if his soul is   
  
still his own. Not that he believes in things like that, not that   
  
he's lapsing into paranoia on occasion.   
  
But the one thing he knows for certain is that he should by rights   
  
be dead. That he isn't the man everyone thinks of him as, that he   
  
sleeps in a corpse's bed and laughs with friends who aren't quite   
  
his own.   
  
Three years, more or less to the day. He wonders if he'll ever   
  
forget that fact. 


End file.
